About me

Welcome! I'm a newlywed who started this blog to document the planning of our September 2010 wedding, and ended up addicted to blogging! Follow our journey through life as we try to find the way to our "perfect" marriage. Happy reading!
You can contact me at: chocolateloversconfessions[@]gmail[dot]com

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Friday, April 30, 2010

Hey all. I'm sure you are all up to speed with our hectic past few weeks... moving and all. We are packed, loaded and ready for shipping! As I am typing this, a trailer (borrowed from my work) is downstairs in storage, filled with ALL our goodies that we bought to ship to Cyprus. Chocolate Lover said it well, that although all our stuff is packed, the house still looks the same. I'm wondering, if say the ship were to sink, would we miss anything?

Well, I am indeed tied to one particular item. My BBQ! I bought the BBQ of my dreams after extensive research. Four vertical burners, the right distance from the grill, stainless everything, infrared sizzle grill on the side, and super cool rotisserie which I can't wait to use! Here's the plan everyone: The night I set up the BBQ and Chocolate Lover and I have our first gourmet steak, it means that we have moved back to Cyprus, found a home, likely started our new careers, got married, and are finally taking a big breath of relaxation. I CANNOT wait until that moment. Just Chocolate Lover and I, and our steaks... yum...!

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Drum roll please ladies! We have two winners for the Delicate Soles giveaway! This was such a great giveaway (I think) and I am very grateful to the people over at the company for giving me the opportunity to host this!

So without further ado, the two winners (according to random.org) are.....

PengaandBicoastal Bride

Here's what these ladies had to say:

Congrats ladies! What I need you to do is go check out the Delicate Soles site, figure out which size you would like (I am a 7.5 and got a Medium - they fit perfectly), make sure you still want the color you initially chose, and email me all this info along with your mailing address. I will then forward all this onto Delicate Soles, and they will ship off your shoes!!! How exciting!

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

So I was lying awake at 3am thinking about a conversation I had with Mr. Milk about our friends. Since we've been away from everyone for so long, we have few mutual friends. Most people are either his friends or my friends, and only a handful are OUR friends.

What does this mean though for us moving back to Cyprus? To give you a little back story about how this conversation came about, we were talking about one of Mr. Milk's friends, who has very recently decided to have his wedding one week after ours! He got engaged about a month ago and informed Mr. Milk that he was thinking about an early October wedding. Mr. Milk told him that we would likely be on our honeymoon then and to try to arrange it so that he could attend the wedding. They have been friends since middle school so Mr. Milk really wanted to be at his wedding.

So last week we find out that the wedding is being arranged and has been set for the week after ours. And no, he was not the one who told us, we found out from a third party. I flipped out! They have joined friends who will be travelling from other parts of Europe for our wedding so there's been no consideration for what they'll do. Then there's the issue of bachelor parties. Mr. Milk is planning on going to Mykonos with his buddies. He doesn't want to share a bachelor party! And for me, frankly I feel like some of our thunder has been taken away. I know it's somewhat childish but that's how I feel. On top of that, we will be having guests over from this part of the world, who we actually want to spend time with since they travelled thousands of miles and spent thousands of dollars to be there! Can you tell I'm pissed off? Do you think I am overreacting?

Anyway, it takes me some time to get over such things. When people are inconsiderate it drives me up the wall. So I tell Mr. Milk that if our international guests are still there I will not be leaving them to go to this so called friends wedding. And so started a larger discussion about friends and socializing.

Mr. Milk is far more social than I. He is quite content being in any kind of situation and making small talk with just about anybody. I on the other hand are far pickier about people who I call friends and am more of a home-body. I prefer to have friends over for dinner, talking, laughing, bonding, than to be out with a bunch of people I don't know but have to feign interest in. Plus I have greatly missed my best girls being over here, and I think at this point in my life, I just want my good old girlfriends versus the effort of making new friends, if that makes sense.

So what will happen when we are back in Cyprus? Will there be conflict about who to hang out with or will we naturally gravitate to some people versus others? And what if we prefer different people? What do we do when we're invited somewhere, with people that one of us isn't a huge fan of? These are all the questions that were floating around my head in the wee hours of the morning. My poker face is non-existant! This is definitely something I can work on, but for the most part I wear my heart on my sleeve and I fear people will be able to see right through me. I guess it will take some time for us to create our own social network as a couple and get into a natural flow. Maybe its just the stress of the big move that is making things look so daunting at the moment.

So what do you guys do? Any advice? How has it been for you guys to establish mutual friends?

Monday, April 26, 2010

We spent the entire weekend packing! We are exhausted! We have 24 boxes and 4 suitcases full of our crap stuff!! The irony is, since we aren't taking any furniture, the place doesn't look any different! Oh well...

Next Saturday we are getting up at 8am and taking all our boxes to the freight forwarding company. We don't leave till the end of May, but we figured we should give our stuff a head start as it can take 40-60 days to get there. Poor Mr. Milk has been on the go for the last 2 weeks and there's not letting up either. Hopefully next Sunday we can have a super lazy day! This week I will continue to assemble invitations, and maybe show you a sneak peak :)

In the meantime, don't forget to enter my giveaway!TWO lucky winners can win a pair of these gorgeous rollable flats in the color of their choice! You have until the end of today PST!

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Not sure if you remember, but my first Etsy purchase was a stamp that matched the font that we had chosen to use for our invitations and monogram. While our invitations have arrived, they need assembling and I will post about those once some have been mailed out - we are sending some of them super early for our international guests.

But back to the stamp. I decided I was going to use it to adorn our envelopes. I still haven't decided what I am doing to address them, but likely just use labels. So to make them prettier, I've been spending my spare time doing this...

We found some turquoise ink at Michael's and a stamp on clearance, which we proceeded to rip off the wooden block and super-glue our own onto it! There are a ridiculous amount of envelopes to stamp, but what the heck. They'll look cute.

This is what they look like. I am stamping the upper left hand corner of the envelope on some, and the center of the flap on others. Keep in mind that we will have the wedding on September 25th and a reception that following Wednesday evening (29th) for our parents friends and colleagues, so we have two different invitations.

Funny note: Half way through stamping I realized that I am stamping the invitation envelopes for the 29th with a stamp that says 25.09.2010! Oh well! What to do...

Monday, April 19, 2010

I was given the amazing opportunity to review a pair of wonderfully genius shoes! The company in question is called Delicate Soles and they seem to have thought of everything a girl can ask for in a pair of flats. Their mantra is:

Like most girls, I love high heels but I hate having to wear them at the end of a long day (or night!). Delicate soles took this into account and created these fabulous rollable shoes that are an "ultra-portable, ultra-fashionable solution to high heel agony".

Check these babies out:

So what do you get with these adorable rollable flats? Well here it is:

For the life of me I can't believe no one thought of this sooner! I had my oh-so-cute silver pair with me on our trip to Portland and after a long day of shopping, I put my achy feet in these rollable flats and chilled out. The were also great to have in the hotel room when you don't want to walk around barefoot on their carpet and don't have flipflops with you! While I love having big handbags, I hate how heavy they can get with all the stuff I end up putting in there. Delicate Soles weigh almost nothing so don't contribute to shoulder pain!

Even more impressive is that this new company gives a portion of all its sales of the rollable shoes to a charity called Share Your Soles which provides shoes to children in impoverished countries. Now you gotta love that!

The best part? Delicate Soles has been generous enough to offer a pair of these ultra-cute shoes to TWO fabulous Chocolate Lover's Confessions readers!!!

Here's how to enter to win a pair:

Visit Delicate Soles and come back here to leave me a comment letting me know which pair is your favorite and how you would use these great rollable shoes!

Be A Chocolate Lover's Confessions follower for a second entry (new followers welcome), and let me know how you follow in a separate comment. Also make sure that I have a way to contact you.

For a third entry, post about this giveaway on your blog with a link back to this post and again, let me know in a separate comment.

For a forth entry, become a twitter follower and post about the giveaway with this line: "Enter to win a pair of DelicateSoles from @Cocoaconfession http://tinyurl.com/y3mekgj"

Note: Please leave a separate comment for each entry (each person can have 4 entries in total).

I will be using random.org to select a winner. The giveaway will remain open all the way through to Monday 26th April at midnight PST. I will announce the winners soon after. Don't forget to make sure that I have a way to contact you!

Friday, April 16, 2010

For those following Chocolate Lover's blog closely, my apologies for not keeping to my Friday schedule. A mix of travel and ridiculous work schedules, plus preparations for our major relocation have kept my head in the hole... So what have I been up to lately? Biggest news is that I got a teaser of what my bachelor party could be like.

Nine of us met in Miami, arriving from England, Canada, Belgium and Germany to celebrate one of our close friend's bachelor party. We had an amazing time in Miami, which left me with an impression of a Vegas-LA hybrid city, perhaps with a bit more glare and 10 times as pretentious. We did everything from cruising on a private yacht to clubbing at Nikki Beach with Hed Kandi, and watching Roger Federrer and Marcos Baghdatis (our Cyprus tennis star) play at the Sony Ericsson Open. Super fun times! Here's some pics from my trip. I can't wait until my bachelor (which is now in the planning phase with my best man)!

Overall though, I must say it was great to be with my good friends and it made me excited to be moving back to Europe where I can be closer to them.

The view from our Miami Beach condos

The famous Nikki Beach

Sailing on a private yacht

Gotta love Florida's unpredictable weather! We got rained on big time the day of the tennis tournament, but thankfully managed to still watch a couple of games in the afternoon.

Just want to wish Stacey and John a very happy wedding day! She is actually posting live from the site as we speak so go check it out! What a dedicated blogger! I feel like I've been stalking her, refreshing her blog every 20mins or so! :)

I first met Stacey over at Blogger Brides when I was new to all this blogging stuff and she has been a supportive, encouraging friend every step of the way.

Stacey (and John) I wish you all the happiness in the world as the two of you embark on this new, wonderful journey together! Enjoy every second of your day and soak it all in! Mostly because I want awesome recaps :)

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Mr. Milk and I were given a gift certificate for a pottery making class at Christmas. We'd been postponing it as neither of us was overly excited about it. Ok, maybe I was less excited than he was, but its not like he was doing somersaults!

So since our time in Vancouver is dwindling down, we thought we might as well go get this over and done with try this. We were the only ones there with the instructor, and I think we both had more fun than we thought we would! Here's some proof.

Mr. Milk making a bowl

Getting there

Look at that!

Me attempting to make a bowl

Shaping up nicely. Its so much harder than it looks.

The end result!

Now the bowls need to dry, be put in the oven, and we get to go back in a week or so to paint and glaze them! Thats the part I am looking forward to. We made some other trinkets but they are kind of crap not worth showing!

Have you guys been up to anything you don't usually do? Or been surprised by an activity you thought wouldn't be that interesting?

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

I was recently contacted by the wonderful people at Bows-n-Ties and given the opportunity to review some of the products on their site. I highly recommend checking them out! For us wedding-consumed brides, the ties are organized by color making it easy to coordinate the ties with our wedding colors!

Since I had already purchased our groomsmen's ties, I got a tie for my dad for the wedding, and some ties for Mr. Milk, which he will need with the start of his new job!

I got this tie for my dad for the wedding. It combines several of our wedding colors in one!

And these are the beautiful ties I got for Mr. Milk. He has been crazy busy these last few weeks so he asked me to pick some out for him and surprise him. He loved them! And they are all silk!

Hendrik, the owner/founder of the company, was super responsive to my emails and requests. The company offers free shipping for orders over $100, even for international orders! And they have a 60 day return policy with no restocking fee! Shipping to Canada can sometimes take forever (I blame customs) but these babies arrived within a 5 days of being shipped!

Prices range from $9.90 to $24.90 so there is plenty to pick from that will be within each persons budget, and I found that the colors of the ties on the site were very accurate to real-life.

And the best part? Bows-n-Ties is offering you wonderful readers 20% off your total purchase!! Isn't that awesome! All you have to do is enter the coupon code SilkTies to get your discount! This is a great opportunity for those of you who are looking for ties for your bridal party or just gifts for the men in your lives.

So hurry over to Bows-n-Ties ladies and get yourselves some fabulous ties at some great prices!

Monday, April 12, 2010

Mr. Milk and I had our first big argument since moving in together the other day. It took us nine months, so that ain't too shabby. We both said things we didn't mean and wish we could take back, and were left feeling totally drained the next day.

It all started over discussions on buying a house. We have been thinking and talking about this on and off since January. An opportunity came to our attention through a developer we know, who is building small, townhome-like houses that Mr. Milk thought we could afford. I am typically the hesitant/resistant one in the relationship when it comes to big decisions like this. I prefer to have most of the facts before I start a discussion about something. Mr. Milk on the other hand is the type who likes to brain storm out loud. He likes to talk about his ideas and figure things out as they come up. Now keep in mind that I am without a job, so clearly I have nothing to contribute to the purchase of a home (or any other major purchase for that matter). So in our discussions, I assumed that Mr. Milk knew about most things that pertained to such a purchase. After all, he was doing some research, talking to people who were recent home-owners, inquiring about mortgages, and so on. I finally become more comfortable with the idea that we can make such a large investment with one salary and started to get more involved in the process. We talked about how if we get in early enough, we could make some changes to the internal layout of the house, like have a larger kitchen and a smaller laundry room rather than a small spare room downstairs.

Well it all blew up in our face the other day. After discussions with the developer Mr. Milk came to the conclusion that this was no longer affordable. I was stunned and disappointed and confused. I guess at the end of the day I felt a little cheated. Here I was trying to take small, calculated steps towards this idea and just as I was starting to feel comfortable with it and get excited about it, I had the rug pulled out from under me. Apparently there were some expenses that he hadn't taken into account, which can happen to anyone, but I did not react well to it all.

This is so how I felt about this argument! Anyway, it all came down to miscommunication and certain expectations that were set that were unrealistic at the end of the day. We talked about our different ways of handling things and are trying to come up with a better way to not fall into such traps in the future. I'm sure just like anything else, it will be a work in progress. Once the intensity of the argument subsided, we were better able to see where we had each gone wrong and apologize. Hopefully we don't have too many more arguments of this intensity, but if they happen only once every nine months, then I really can't complain.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Sorry to have been MIA on you again, but as most of you know this is a super busy time for us. Our best man is in town until Saturday and we were on a trip to Portland over the long Easter weekend. I have been reading along and staying up to date on your blogs but just not commenting very much.

I did want to quickly share with you that I checked one more thing of our to-do list! My wedding band! And it looks something like this...

source: Google Images

I am so excited to wear it! I love all the bling!

Hope everything is going well for you ladies and I will be back to normal posting by this coming week.

Thursday, April 1, 2010

William and Cynthia came from the United States and were married on the 9th of September in Santorini. Only William and Cynthia. No guests. Their wedding planner had arranged that their ceremony would be covered by a photographer and videographer. Nevertheless, they asked me to photograph their day, from the morning when they would start their preparations until the evening. What kind of pictures can a wedding photographer take without any guests, with no reception, another photographer covering the ceremony and absolutely no posed, location shooting...

This is what our wonderful photog was faced with this past September. But he did an amazing job! There are too many pictures to post one by one, but if you click this link you'll see for yourselves how awesomely he overcame this challenge!